Outdoor barbecues, cookers or stoves are a popular way to prepare food away from the kitchen of a home. Conventionally, outdoor barbecues, cookers or stoves include an open support over a heat source such as a collection of charcoal briquettes or one or more gas burners. The open support, or grill, is commonly constructed of a number of horizontally disposed, parallel elements connected to a frame. The elements of the grill are most often fashioned of relatively thin, cylindrical metal. The diameter of the cylindrical stock material is often substantially smaller than the spacing between cylindrical elements, leaving a fairly open structure upon which the food to be grilled may be placed.
A grilling surface as described above may be sufficient for cooking large foodstuffs or for cooking pieces of food which tend to stay whole during the cooking process. However, the described cooking surface may not be adequate for cooking smaller pieces of food, or for cooking food which flakes apart or breaks into smaller pieces during the cooking process; these smaller pieces of food may easily fall through the cooking surface and be lost to the person doing the cooking. Having to handle and/or turn the food during the cooking process may only exacerbate these problems.
Heretofore various grilling devices have been devised for holding small food items on or over a grill so as to prevent the food items from falling into the heat source below. Such prior grilling devices include baskets such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,048,882, to Fielding et al. One drawback of such prior grilling devices is the relative difficulty of turning the food over in a controlled manner on the grill or other support for cooking the food from opposite sides. Often the devices are provided with elongated handles fixed to a food holding container for placing and maneuvering the food container on the grill. In such devices loose food items have to be jostled in an uncontrolled manner to cook the food from different sides or the entire device has to be turned over often in an awkward maneuver that may require the user to alter his or her grip of the device. A need exists for a grilling device the facilitates the turning other of the food held by the food holding device on a barbecue grill or other cooking surface. A need also exists for a such a grilling device wherein a handle or handles are provided that are optionally removable from the main food holding structure of the device. A need still further exists for such a grilling device wherein an improved food holding body or structure is optionally provided.